The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (49 page)

“But I’m not.”

“Of course you are. As we just said, the devil makes work for idle hands. You’ll see her at the party, and you can have a good talk about it with her then. So, show me what you’re wearing tonight.”

Bett blinked, wondering which part of this conversation she could blame on jet lag and which part on Lola’s conversational style.

“Bett? Your outfit?”

Bett took out the dress and held it against herself. She’d found it in a vintage shop in London. The style was sleeveless and simple, the fabric a rich red brocade, swirls of color picked out with gold thread here and there.

“Beautiful. Try it on for me.”

Bett did as she was told.

Lola asked her to turn around, inspecting her from all sides. “I think that back seam could do with taking in, to stop the skirt flaring so much. Would you like me to do it for you?”

Bett took it off and handed it over without argument. If she didn’t agree, Lola was just as likely to come running after her at the party with a needle and thread.

“I’ll drop it back in a little while. By the way, I don’t think you’re looking well either, despite what I said when you first arrived. You look like you need some fresh country air, too.”

Bett glared for a moment, then a smile started on her face and a warm feeling started in her chest. “You really are a nasty old crone, aren’t you?”

“And getting worse every year.” She held her granddaughter tight against her for a moment. “I really am very, very happy to see you.”

“I’m very, very happy to see you, too. I’ve got something for you, by the way.”

“A present? How splendid.”

Bett reached down into her handbag, where she had been carrying the gift, not wanting to let it out of her sight. She had spent the last two weekends searching through the stalls at Camden market until she found what she wanted. She watched as Lola opened the blue velvet box. Inside was a pair of costume jewelery earrings and a matching necklace, made from extravagantly colored glass beads of different sizes and shapes. Lola looked up, eyes wide. “Bett, they’re beautiful.”

“Do you like them?”

“I love them. Where did you get them?”

“In London. An old gray-haired woman in a rainbow cloak was hobbling along the road near the Houses of Parliament as I drove past one morning. As I got close she dissolved in a flash of silver smoke and there lying on the ground were these. So I picked them up and brought them home for you.”

Lola clapped her hands gleefully. It was one of her traditions—anything brought home from a market or charity shop had to be handed over with a story attached. “You haven’t forgotten the rules, have you? I adore them, thank you.” Bett was enveloped in another hug, and then spoken to sternly. “Now, leave your unpacking for the time being, climb into bed there, and have a quick nap. You’ve bags under your eyes big enough to take shopping.”

Bett did as she was told, peeping up at Lola from under the sheets, the white cotton pulled up to her nose. “Thanks, Granny.”

“Don’t you Granny me, you bold girl.” With that, Lola pulled the curtains, turned out the light, and shut the door firmly behind her.

Chapter Five

L
ola walked two doors down and let herself into her own room. Number four had always been her favorite, with its view over the vineyard-covered hills. She liked number fifteen, too. It was the most peaceful, when she was in that kind of mood. Number eleven was the best one in high summer, she’d discovered, nice and cool, and number eight was the best for the Christmas party season, with its excellent view over the carpark and all the shenanigans that took place there late at night.

She’d always enjoyed all the moving around, had never found it at all unsettling. Of course, it helped that the decor in each room was identical: brown carpet, pale cream walls, one double bed, one single bed, a pastel print of a vineyard scene—from France, not the Clare Valley, but the guests weren’t to know that—a small table and chairs, a wardrobe that contained not just tea- and coffee-making facilities, but a bar fridge and a mini safe. There was even a full-length mirror installed on the long single door. All a person could need.

She went straight to her CD player and put on a Glenn Miller collection, a little louder than usual, then sat down and shut her eyes, all the better to review things so far. She always played Glenn Miller when she needed cheering up, and the sad truth was that’s what she needed right now. Was it wrong to be feeling so disappointed? What had she expected, after all? That the girls would only have to glance at each other and all the troubles and cares of the past would melt away? That they would turn back into her little Alphabet Sisters again? It wasn’t going to be as simple as that, it seemed. Not when the three of them had such stubborn, dramatic streaks. All her own fault, of course. She’d always encouraged it in them.

She still found it hard to believe this rift between the girls had lasted so long. And even harder to believe the whole row had been caused by Matthew, of all people.

“The three girls had a terrible catfight over him, I believe,” Len the butcher, the town gossip, had said to her eagerly just after it had happened.

Lola remembered briskly suggesting he shouldn’t believe everything he heard. A catfight, indeed. But afterward the term had quite appealed to her. Her granddaughters weren’t unlike a trio of cats. Anna, the eldest, like a Siamese, all sleek and sophisticated. Carrie, the youngest, still in her kitten stage, even though she was nearly thirty. Sweet as can be one minute, hissing and spitting the next. As for Bett, her middle darling—Lola softened at the very thought of her. Bett reminded her of a lost stray sometimes, needing lots of affection and love but then repaying it in spades.

For weeks now she’d been thinking of nothing else but this reunion. She was sure the other ladies in the charity shop were sick of hearing about the three girls, and especially about their days as the Alphabet Sisters. At least Mrs. Shaw, God bless her, always seemed interested.

“Was it a serious thing?” Mrs. Shaw had asked. “Like the Andrews Sisters? Proper tours and recording contracts and all of that?”

“Oh, good heavens, no,” Lola had answered. “I started it more as a way of keeping the three of them occupied, to tell you the truth.”

It had been her idea to take on the role of minding the girls while Jim and Geraldine got on with the running of the motels. She’d been concerned how little attention the girls were getting from their parents. Too many late nights and too much roaming around unchecked hadn’t been good for the three girls, she’d thought. It wasn’t that they were neglected, exactly, just more in need of a firmer hand.

The new arrangement had suited everyone very well from the start. Lola’s great affection for her granddaughters had turned into a love so strong it had surprised even herself. She had been so busy trying to find her feet in Australia when Jim was a child that she’d never had the luxury to enjoy being a mother. They had been very close, and still were, but being a grandmother was completely different from being a mother, she’d discovered. More carefree, more fun. Watching her granddaughters running around outside in the sunshine, or even hearing them call to each other in their Australian accents had once or twice even brought her to tears, though they were hastily wiped away. Anna, Bett, and Carrie had made her feel settled here in Australia, she’d realized. Made all the hardship of the early days worthwhile.

But Lola had also discovered that three strong-minded, intelligent little girls needed more than dolls and puzzle books to keep them stimulated. “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast,” she remembered reading. She’d hoped it would have the same effect on three near savages of granddaughters. She started teaching them Irish songs she’d known since she was a child, picking out the tunes on the old piano that took up a corner of the dining room in the motel they were living in at the time.

She’d been surprised at how quickly they’d taken to it. Anna’s voice had been distinctive even back then, deep and melodic. Carrie’s voice had matched her looks, sweet and instantly appealing. But it was Bett who shone musically, quickly displaying not just an ear for harmonies but a real talent at the piano. Lola had silently and belatedly blessed the elderly music teacher from her own childhood, who had come to her house twice weekly and joylessly taught her scales, folk tunes, and simple classical pieces. Lola had passed it all on to Bett, with much more enthusiasm, she hoped. The two of them had spent hours side by side on the wooden piano stool, graduating quickly from simple tunes to lively duets. Bett had soon started teaching herself to play more complicated songs. When they’d moved to a new motel the following year, the first thing they’d bought was a good-quality piano. It had been with them ever since.

It wasn’t the piano, though, but three dresses that had marked the start of the Alphabet Sisters. Lola still couldn’t think of the day she brought home that first trio of dresses without laughing. Anna had been twelve at the time, Bett ten, Carrie seven. The dresses had been made for little girls of fifteen, thirteen, and eleven, but Lola folded and pinned each of them until they just about fitted. Then she lined the three girls up, eyes shut, in front of the mirror in her bedroom and then told them to take a look.

Anna was appalled. Bett was horrified. Carrie was quite pleased. The dresses were of green and red gingham, with tight bodices and flared skirts.

“We look like we should be in
Little House on the Prairie,
” Anna said in a disgusted voice.

Bett was just as alarmed. “We look like we should be in a dustbin.”

“I think we look nice,” Carrie said.

Anna reached behind her, trying to take her dress off. “It’s all right for you, Carrie. You do look nice. Lola, can you help me get this off?”

“No, not yet. And stop pulling at it like that. You won’t be able to get out of them yourselves, darling. I had to pin the backs to make them fit.”

Bett was wriggling in her dress as though it was coated in itching powder. “Lola, please.”

Carrie had been silent, happily admiring herself in the mirror.

“Who did they belong to?”

“I asked the lady in the charity shop, and it was quite some story. They apparently belonged to a famous trio of child conjurers called the Okey Dokey Gals, who toured the world with their pet camel and a small gray-faced cat, doing magic tricks and chores around the house for anyone who took their fancy.”

“So how did their dresses end up in a charity shop?” Bett challenged.

“It was a tragic story and one for another day. So what do you think of them?”

Anna was not happy. “They’d suit the Pokey Yokey Gals better than the Okey Dokey Gals.”

“Or the Yukky Pukky Gals,” Bett added.

Anna again. “They’d be perfect for a country-and-western singing group called the Yukky Pukky Gals, in fact.”

Lola was actually pleased. “Do you really think you look like a singing act?”

Anna nodded. “We look like those poor kids you see forced onto talent shows on the TV.”

Carrie brightened. “I’d like to be on one of those shows.”

“Would you, Carrie?” Lola smiled, feeling like a fisherman slowly bringing in a catch. “That’s good. Because I’ve entered the three of you in a competition the local TV station is running. The winners get to perform at the agricultural show next month. All proceeds to charity. Just a little effort from each of you, with my guidance, and think of all the joy you will bring to the world. Charity begins at home, remember.”

Anna groaned. “Lola, no way. I’d die of embarrassment. Who sings in public with their sisters?”

“There is a long and honorable tradition of family singing groups.”

The three girls looked at her.

“The Von Trapps. The Partridge Family. The Osmonds. The Jackson Five. And now there’s—”

“The Quinlan Sisters,” Carrie called out.

Bett wasn’t impressed. “It’s not very catchy.”

“Anna, Bett, and Carrie?” Lola suggested.

Carrie pouted. “Why am I always last?”

“Because you’re the thickest,” Anna said. Carrie pinched her. “Ow! Lola, Carrie pinched me.”

“Only because she got there before me. Carrie, you are always last because your two older sisters are preparing the way for you, in the way flower girls prepare the way for a beautiful bride.”

Anna and Bett rolled their eyes. Carrie looked happier.

Lola clapped her hands. “I have it. Anna, Bett, and Carrie, the ABC Girls. No, let’s make it even catchier. Not the Andrews Sisters but the Alphabet Sisters. Perfect for TV.”

Lola laughed out loud now, alone in the motel room, as she remembered their first TV appearance. Over the years the girls had got used to singing on TV, but that first time they had been overawed by the lights, the cables, and the cameras, not to mention the excitable hostess. Their harmonies had disappeared, their carefully rehearsed hand movements had looked more like violent twitches, and each of them had had the same panicked expressions in her eyes. The whole family—and several bemused guests—had watched it go to air on the TV in the motel bar the following week. The three girls had shrieked with embarrassment the whole way through. As Anna had said, they’d looked more like the Zombie Sisters than the Alphabet Sisters.

Lola felt a sudden welling of tears in her eyes, as the tension she’d been feeling for the past few weeks drained out of her. She’d been waiting and worrying for something to go wrong. For Anna to call and say she wasn’t going to be able to make it. For Bett to say she had decided to stay in London. Lola had hardly been able to contain herself when Bett had rung to say she wasn’t just coming home for the party, she was coming home for good.

Had her girls any idea at all how much she had missed them? she wondered. Not just their physical presence, but all the stories and jokes and even the rows that had shot back and forth between them all their lives, to Lola’s great and constant entertainment. She wasn’t fanciful enough to think that things would ever return to the glory days of the Alphabet Sisters. All the dressing up, and the attempts to get them to rehearse their songs, and those early-morning drives to this show or that country TV station. And of course the fights over who got to sit in the front of the car beside her, or whose favorite song would be sung first, or which order they’d stand in. But for every fight there had been a funny moment—missed cues, out-of-tune singing, on-stage spats between them—even if Lola had to pretend to be cross with them, to try to keep some control at least. Some chance. As the past three years had shown, she had no control over them at all.

There had been a moment a year ago when she’d thought the feud was about to be over. The terrible time when Ellen was attacked by that dog. Bett and Carrie had been shocked when she’d told them, and Lola knew for a fact that they had both contacted Anna in the days afterward. Bett had written, and Carrie had rung and left a message with Glenn. But nothing more had come of it. Which was when she’d realized she was going to have to try another way …

Oh, if only this had all happened years ago, when her bones weren’t as creaky, her mind faster, when she didn’t feel so tired all the time. “You are nearly eighty,” her doctor had said at the last visit, when Lola admitted she needed a long afternoon nap some days. “Though you’re in remarkably good nick, I’ll give you that.”

“That’ll be the gin,” Lola said. “I’m preserving myself.”

“Good Irish blood, probably, and all that hard work over the years. How are those hips of yours?”

Lola had had both hips replaced five years previously. “I feel like they’ve been mine forever.”

“Are you still doing those stretching exercises twice a day?”

Lola nodded. “I’m so agile I could get a job in a Bangkok nightclub.”

The doctor had nearly choked. “Lola, you get worse every visit and you know it. I can’t give you any more advice. You already know what you have to do. Try to take things easy, don’t get too stressed about anything, enjoy yourself. You deserve it.”

Of course she did. And she did try and take things easy, having her nap most afternoons, drinking eight glasses of water a day. Well, eight glasses of something every day. Surely there was plenty of water in tonic water? And on the days she didn’t feel so good, there was always makeup. It helped that her skin was still in good condition. All those years of wearing inch-thick foundation, Anna had said once. Her skin probably hadn’t felt a ray of sunshine in sixty years of living in Australia. She picked up her perfume bottle, an expensive French brand, one of her few luxuries, and squirted a little on her wrists. What was that joke she’d overheard two schoolboys tell last week? “Why do girls wear makeup and perfume?” “Because they’re ugly and they stink.”

Lola put a finger on each temple and gently massaged, thinking hard. Her birthday party was just hours away, and she was certainly in no mood to have the girls edging around each other the whole time, the way they had been so far today. Anna was so rigid it was amazing she’d been able to walk at all. Bett was a bag of nerves. Carrie was sulking and stomping about. None of them was being anything like their usual lovely selves.

How much farther could she push them? She had been treading on thin ice today already, she knew. There had been little flashes of anger from all three of them, when she had joked and tried to ease the tension between them on their first meeting. But it was so hard to be patient. Every day she was so conscious of time ticking away from her. The idea of turning eighty had hit her with a terrible shock and propelled her into making these plans, getting them back together. There was something so
old
about being eighty. She had never had such a sense of urgency, or such a feeling that she was living on borrowed time.